427. Poem: Getting Used to Obscenity

So I told George about this site I came across a bunch of naked women sitting in a circle with vibrators in their winkies listening to an older woman with a device in her winkie tell them how to do it and all it will do for their mental health and the cause of women's liberation and George says well that's the way it's going these days porn entering the mainstream and you might as well get used to it and I say hell I'm already used to the porn it's the pop psychology and liberation spiel I want to call the police about.

426. Poem: Our Lady

Queen of Heaven, prayed to by Mike oh Mary help me when the coal slide buried him, what power she must have had a goddess yet human as the girl with her hand extended stopping the announcing angel wait let me take this in wait God himself you say in me from me me what little boy isn't going to bow and revere as his mother and teachers tell him more about her, teaching him reverence and respect respect for higher power and what little boy wouldn't shiver when the oldest boy in the gang Ray then said "ah my Lady's ass" showing as the prof explained later the attraction in profanity it let men show other men their manliness they weren't going to let a bunch of women boss them around and in a gang of boys the first boy to take Mary's name in vain wow that kid had become a man that is had balls and what better sign of their size than the size of the forces he was willing to take on consciously at first then unconsciously and faintly when such boys called every disrespected thing bloody a reduction of the old "by our Lady" but they didn't know that and said "aw your bloody ass" didn't know they were saying "your Lady's ass" didn't know much of anything which is why they were called Know Nothings and with their heirs were against all the elitists who knew something because they had listened to their teachers their women teachers with respect even though they had no balls.

425. Government Shutdown over the Wall

Have you ever heard so many words meaning so little?  "Negotiate." "Compromise."  "Bargain in good faith."

Clearly neither side is going to let the other have a victory.  Victory is either having a wall or not having a wall.  Anything not a victory will be considered a defeat.  So what are you going to negotiate about or compromise on?  Who cares about your good faith?

So all the words from either side now are just noise.  Tell somebody to call you when they hear "OK, no wall" or "OK, wall."  Expect to sleep a long time.

424. Equality

Now a long essay in the New Yorker (1-7-19) about an eminent philosopher who "has built a case, elaborated across decades, that equality is the basis for a free society."  And my wife said long ago — trailed by me — that the concept of equality is a perfect example of a non-starter.

Take any situation where knowledge gives a better outcome than ignorance.  For drama let's make it a dangerous situation, like in a storm at sea or on the edge of a high mountain.  Put a group of people in it.   They are not all going to be equally knowledgeable.  The one who knows best how to get to harbor or down from the mountain will be — what shall we call him or her?  The boss?  The chief?  In any case we recognize a superior and destroy any notion of equality as something to strive for, an ideal.

To broaden the destruction substitute for "knowledgeable" and "ignorant" any pair of terms that identify human traits that influence outcomes — realistic-idealistic, decisive-deliberative, warm-hearted, cold-minded.  Whenever we assess their influence and fit to the occasion and find them pre-eminent in one person we give up on equality.

"Whenever."  Whenever not?  Isn't the major part of our lives, we goal-oriented people, choosing and following the best means to our ends?  And since none of us is omniscient and very few of us are collections of the equally knowledgeable that will mean following a superior.

In a very small part of our lives will we have the freedom —freedom from the link between ends and means — to claim equality.  And unless we define and limit that part very carefully ("Here we must take 'created equal' to mean 'without assignment to nobility or royalty by birth") we are going to be thrown into confusion.  By our bad start  with a basically incoherent concept.

423. The Force to Go to War: Proposal of a Precise Measurement

Nothing, I think, would be more useful to historians than a precise measurement of the force that will make or let a president go to war.  I propose a scale in which the force on December 8, 1941 is 1.0.  I remember feeling that force around me. "You sneaky guys just killed thousands of my fellow Americans.  You see us Americans quarreling with each other and think we won't stick together, or last the long haul.  You think we're soft and stuck on making money.  Well stand by, you dirty bastards, here we come.  For whatever it takes for as long as it takes."  That's the top.  A president who resists a force like this will be removed from office.

All right, abbreviate the unit and you've got a convenient notation for force on the morning of 9-12-01, say .9PH.  And ahead of you are decimals for every date on which a president proposes war.  Say .6PH for the date of declaration of the Spanish-American War, .8PH for the Civil War, .4PH for the Mexican War, and .5PH for the First Iraq War.  Those are my numbers; the system will be just as useful to those who disagree and want to argue it out. 

In fact, the biggest payoff may be in discussion and argument.  Did Bush Sr. have to war against Saddam Hussein after he entered Kuwait?  "Of course.  Saddam's thumb would be on the world's oil artery in one more move.  Americans knew that.  Bush had .8PH on him."

As with any numerical scale this one needs empirical illustration.  Like "scattered whitecaps" for Force 3 (Gentle Breeze) on the Beaufort Scale. A conference on this would be illuminating.  What would be the political equivalent of a Fresh Breeze ("5, many whitecaps, some spray")?  a Gale? ("8, foam blown in streaks, twigs breaking off trees") a Hurricane? ("12, air filled with foam, sea completely white").  Would the political equivalent of a hurricane be streets filled with demonstrators, rioters, clamoring for military action?  If so, when a president  said, "I couldn't stand up against it"?" we could look out the window, take in the storm, and say to him (or her), "We understand.  We're with you."  He'd know history was going to be with him.

PH is not rigidly fixed.  Being, or being seen as, the nation attacked adds to it.  I'd say .2PH, on average.  Leaders knew this before they had an exact measurement, of course, and we see it in the common efforts to present the other side as the aggressor.  Even Hitler, invading Poland, made an attempt at it, putting bodies in Polish uniforms on the German side of the border, to be "discovered" before his troops crossed it.  It gained him only a very small PH, say .05, and that only with his own people, but it shows leaders' discomfort, and need to calculate such things.

I can hear PH in conversations among advisers.  Tune in Hitler's, pre-Poland, 1939: "Man, we don't need extra PH.  With the Versailles Treaty stoking such outrage and the Jewish commies taking over Hamburg and the Brits still riding high on their horse we've got all we need."

"Yeah, but the Boss, you know, he hates to throw away PH, even if it's only .05."

"OK, OK.  So get some bodies, dress 'em right, and we'll take the .05."

Starting a war you go with the PH you've got but during a war you've got to make adjustments.  Are your atrocities getting more play than the enemy's?  Get your PR people working on it.  Get your troops, if they can't reduce the savagery (ha, during what is essential savagery?), to at least try to hide it better.  Consider who's watching before they torture or demean a prisoner.  The PH differential can go as high here as .15 in favor of the side that does the better job.

Between wars your analysis can go deeper.  PH is so constantly either desired or bucked by leaders that we have a hard time thinking of it as separate from them.  But at some times and in some places we have a PH wind blowing and nobody to take advantage of it.  As in France now, with such big crowds clamoring for a change in government.  But no leader.  Nobody to take advantage of the wind and sail to a goal, and make his or her name.

Maybe the wind there is not strong enough to be worth the risk.  For a really strong, untapped force look to what's left over after the invasion of Afghanistan released the main charge ("Get those bastards who did this") provided by 9-11.  It wasn't like WW2, where we knocked the Japanese and the Germans flat, clearly getting the bastards.  We hadn't really gotten the bastards who destroyed the Twin Towers.  So George W. Bush has a high percentage of the force of 9-11 to call on. 

I can't think of a president with a comparable wind at his back.  His meter probably has it at .7PH.  And, remember, we're measuring mass emotion, never discriminating in its release.  It's OK to drive in the right general direction.  Your choice is an easy sell.

Bush chose to invade Iraq.  A once impossible sell made possible now by high PH and low information.  Other people with impossible sells weren't blind to what was happening.  There were the idealists in the liberal press keen to spread American values.  The glow of Thomas Friedman's vision of a country in the center of the Middle East demonstrating the power of democracy brightened by the day, and was fixed by recognition of his authority — Times columnist, author of a solid book on the region.  There were the Zionists thinking of what a nearby American army would do for their security.  There were the evangelicals sharing that thought, maybe, but clearly aroused by the chance to fight evil (now in the person of Saddam Hussein).  And there were the usual gang of males just eager to fight.  Mostly neocons here.  "Jump on, fellows.  This our chance."

If you doubt the presence and potency of the force I am talking about here you might try picturing these parties trying to sell the invasion of Iraq without it.  No leftover 9-11 PH to take advantage of.  Say it's 9-10.  "I propose that we invade Iraq in order to strengthen democracy in the Middle East."  "Let us invade Iraq in order to protect Israel."  "Let us invade Iraq and make some gains against evil."  Introduce the gale that failed to blow over the 9-11 bastards, put it behind your president, and you've got an invasion of Iraq backed by a majority of the American people, including many you counted on for caution and thought.  All complicit in what now, by consensus of the reflective center, is the dumbest thing America ever did.  (See Foreign Policy, 3-10-12.)

422. Poem: Anne Sexton's father

the poor bastard up on the roof playing Santa Claus little knowing he was going to wind up in the book as a Nazi yeah a dead Nazi he says (he heard me!) if I don't catch that gutter in time jesus what am I doing up here the kids can't even hear me stomp stomp ho ho louder Ralph louder yells Mary HO HO HO did you remember to ring the sleigh bells Mair christ there goes Ken no it's Barbie herself should have tied the fucking bag come on give me more bells HO HO HO STOMP STOMP STOMP.

421. Poem: The History Major

Drunk with poetry I urged a friend into the streets quoting the flaming words but he said no that's only half the story and another friend said here's the other half and another friend flaming said no here's the other half and another said right but here's at least a sixth of it you've got to fit in and we were all drunk and fighting like the Irish slamming with words until Pete got the idea of slamming with facts no one fact a small fact just enough to wipe the satisfied look off Arnold's face so he takes it to Victor the history major and Victor says to Arnold no it wasn't the way you say here not in this part of the story and Pete says see but Victor says no it wasn't your way either not quite not here and both say to Victor godalmighty how the hell was it and Victor says complicated too complicated for a poem and seeing their falling faces he says complicated but simple enough in places for me to tell you how it definitely wasn't and Arnold says well that's something and Pete says enough I hope for you to check with Victor before you go shooting off your mouth and Arnold says you too buddy.